Bio

Oona Kivelä is a world champion athlete who competes in the sport of pole art. A former competitive gymnast, she is the world’s most decorated pole athlete with four World Championship titles along with several additional gold medals and prestigious titles.

Kivelä is the World Street Workout and Calisthenics Federation’s first female World Champion, a title she won in 2014. Previously the sport had been considered for men only.

She is known for her superior strength, athleticism, flexibility as well as her artistic style. Kivelä won the world pole champion title in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 as well as three championship titles at artistic Pole Art competition in 2009, 2011, 2012. She won silver medals in 2010 and 2013.

In addition to her competitive career, Kivelä is a much sought-after instructor and lecturer. She leads pole art workshops all over the world.

Her video “24 Most Hardcore Strength + Flex Moves “ has been viewed more than 2 million times. Watch here. Her Instagram feed, @oonakofficial, has almost 80,000 followers. In 2016, she was featured on ten episodes of the nationally televised program, “Fitnesspäiväkirjat” (“The Fitness Diaries”) on AVA.

A gymnast since the age of four, Kivelä coached and judged gymnastics in her native Finland, choreographing floor routines for Finland’s top gymnasts. In 2007, with partner Christina Nurmi, the women opened “Gymi” and started the company “Oy Gymicom Ab”, creating a health club for children and teens. Now a successful franchise, “Gymi” has four locations in Finland.

Athleticism runs in the family—-Kivelä’s father was a world-champion wind surfer winning world titles in the 1980s, also playing ice hockey in Finnish leagues. Her mother, a model, was a gymnast and gymnastics teacher. Her grandfather was a leader in Finnish sports administration, serving as chairman of SVUL (Finnish National Sports Federation) and the president of Finnish baseball federation.

Kivelä speaks fluent English, Swedish and Finnish. As a child she lived in Paris with her mother, attending a private Swedish School. At age 17, Kivelä was an exchange student at Pauling County High School in Georgia, (USA) and competed in club gymnastics there.

In 2009, she received a degree in physical education from the Vierumäki Sports Institute in Finland. Kivelä was born 1983 in Helsinki, Finland.